GOSHEN — Once known for enforcing the law over a nearly 40-year career, Peter Fappiano now spends his spare time enforcing flavor with a new mobile barbecue venture.
The Chesterfield police chief and Goshen resident recently launched Cleaver & Cigar Smoke House, and has been warming up by catering a series of private events, including birthdays, golf tournaments, graduation parties, family picnics and employee appreciation outings.
The menu is as varied as one would expect from a mobile barbecue business, featuring steaks, chicken, corn, baked potatoes, pig shots, baked beans and pulled pork. Adding to the mix are homemade French fries and potato chips, barbequed hot dogs and burgers, as well as smoked pizzas.
The business endeavor all started with a trailer. Initially, Fappiano had the vision of putting his smoker on an 8-foot trailer. Then more feet were added to bring on a grill, slat top and two friers. There is also a sink for washing hands and dishes.
The result is a trailer that is now 28 feet in length featuring a fully-functioning kitchen on wheels.
“As we started building this I said I want to do a catering business … and now we’re starting to take off,” he said this week, stoking the charcoal of his smoker and preparing a meal for a 100-person golf tournament in Easthampton.
“We built everything on it. We built the frame, we built the axles on the springs,” he said about the trailer, which attracts some attention on the roads.
“Anytime I’m driving it around people are like ‘what?’ and giving me thumbs up. They turn their heads to see this thing because it is one of a kind,” he said.
The equipment on the trailer cost around $6,000, but he said the entire trailer and all of its attachments would cost $30,000 in places like the South where similar trailers are sold more frequently.
There are eight people who have teamed up to make the business happen. And thus far, it has all been volunteer work by the team.
Those wanting barbeque grub for events pay for the food and charcoal and other necessities to be able to put out a meal. But everyone involved works for free.
One of the guys on his team is retired law enforcement officer Mark Challet. Despite not getting a paycheck, the experience compensates for it, he said.
“I have something in common with Pete. I like to see people happy and eating because I’m addicted to food,” Challet says. “And when they smile and appreciate what we cook, that’s what makes me want to help Pete and do whatever.”
In addition, helping out gets him “off the mountain” in Worthington.
Fappiano said over time his helpers will be paid, but at the moment, this is the group’s idea of fun as they experiment, fine-tune and seek ways to improve the food on the menu. Fappiano says people tell him he has been “killing it.”
“If you present a good product, and it’s reasonable, people don’t mind paying as long as it’s a good product,” he said. “Knock on wood, people have been real real happy with the product that we put out.”
The name for the business came organically. The cleaver refers to his broad-bladed knife, and the cigar honors his business partner and cigar enthusiast Doug McGill.
The bull in the middle of the company’s logo represents Fappiano “keeping everybody straight,” which is something he spent his career doing.
Fappiano began in law enforcement in 1986. All but six years of his 39-year career were spent with the Northampton Police Department, where he spent 27 years as a detective on the drug task force.
“1986 is a long time ago. I started with a six-shooter, pistols with a big long stick, and the captain said, ‘hey get out there kid,'” he says.
Being on the drug task force required him to grow out a ponytail and beard. “My mom hated it,” is all he said about the experience.
At 61, he anticipates to stay on as the Chesterfield police chief for the next couple years.
In the meantime he is working to ramp up his barbeque business.
When the cold weather arrives, though, the trailer will go away. But that’s when his winter side gig begins. Fapianno creates live edge countertops, or natural wooden surfaces, with jagged, natural edges, that he seals with epoxy.